Unkind Arithmetic
Life would be kinder if we couldn’t count.If all we could do was approximate
we’d find a binding fellowship in groups;
wouldn’t resent our friend for coming fifth
when we lagged in a tired and breathless twelfth –
we’d think we’d run together, more or less;
the bunch that didn’t win but didn’t lose.
And rather than a thousand Facebook friends
there could, like starlings, only be many,
whilst my measly dozen would keep me close
to her (fifteen) and him (a measlier five) –
we’d all be classed as some and rest content,
not disenchanted and desperate for more.
So, if we banish logging, cows and cars
to save the world, let’s banish numbers too:
stick with none, a, a couple and a few,
with very, very many for the stars.
We’ll be oblivious when trillionaires
inflate to zillionaires ( and so will they!)
We’ll feel the comfort of the multitudes
who’ve just a little but just enough,
powerless to compute the growing gap
dividing us from those who’ve raced ahead
to laze in fortresses of opulence
like emperors and retinues of old.
If only we weren’t the counting kind, life
might stretch some millennia more, our envy
and disenchantment shrunk tenfold at least.
But as things stand our days would seem numbered,
diminishing all the more rapidly
each time we try to calculate their sum.
Very, very many are down to some,
and sooner than we think will be a few,
a couple, a, then none, the future gone –
our final calling to account before
we and numbers don’t figure any more,
wiped forever from infinity’s slate.
